Home

April 29, 2013

INS Sindhurakshak arrives in India

The kilo class submarine, which was retrofitted in the Zvyozdochka
shipyard, in Severodvinsk arrived in the Mumbai port on Monday.
The INS Sindhurakshak, a diesel-electric
submarine of the Indian Navy that underwent interim overhaul and modernisation
at the Russian Severodvinsk-based Zvezdochka shipyard, arrived at the Mumbai
port today, a senior Russian naval official said. “The submarine reached Mumbai
this morning,” Rear Admiral Aleksandr Litenkov told RIR.
The modernised submarine arrived in Mumbai
through the Northern Sea Route and stopped in ports, such as Cartagena, Spain,
and Alexandria, Egypt.
The kilo class submarine was retrofitted in
the Zvyozdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk, north-west Russia. In the course of
refit it was armed with modern Club-S cruise missiles, Porpoise radar and its
cooling system was modernised. “It was a very wise decision on the part of the
Indian Navy to completely modernise and retrofit the submarine in the
Zvyozdochka shipyard,” Litenkov told RIR, adding that the shipyard would be
ready to assist India in modernising its naval fleet.
The contract for intermediate overhaul and
modernisation of the large diesel-electric submarine (project Type 877EKM Kilo)
was signed between the Zvyozdochka ship repair centre and the Indian Ministry
of Defence in June 2010. The submarine arrived in Severodvinsk and was accepted
for repairs in August of that year.

The INS Sindhurakshak is the fifth Indian
submarine to be repaired and modernised at Zvyozdochka. The first vessel, INS
Sindhuvir, was handed over to the Indian Navy after repairs and modernisation
in 1999.
A typical kilo-class submarine has a
displacement of 2,300 tonnes, length of 72.6 metres, a submerged speed of 19
knots (about 35 kilometres an hour), a test depth of 300 metres, a crew of 52
and endurance of 45 days. These submarines are armed with six 533 mm torpedo
tubes.
The modernisation arms the submarines with
additional state-of-the-art Russian Club S anti-ship missiles (designed by the
Novator bureau) with a range of about 200 kilometres. Supplementary Indian-made
equipment includes a USHUS hydro-acoustic unit and CCS-MK communications
system.
INS Sindhurakshak was built in 1997 by the
Admiralteiskie verfi shipyard in St Petersburg for the Indian Navy.
Zvyozdochka has become a leading partner of
the Indian Navy in maintaining the combat readiness of the kilo class
submarines, experts in Moscow and Delhi say. Zvyozdochka provides its services
not only at its Severodvinsk shipyard, but also at the home station of the
Indian submarines. The shipyard has two covered ship-houses with seven building
berths designed for repairing and building vessels weighing up to 18,000
tonnes. United Shipbuilding Corporation controls 100 percent minus one share in
the shipyard through its subsidiary OAO Northern Centre for Shipbuilding and
Ship Repair.